Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
PACIS2025-1928
Description
Health short videos have become a vital tool for disseminating health information and exerting persuasive influence on viewers. Previous research has mainly examined the isolated effects of rational and emotional appeals, leaving a gap in the comprehensive analysis of their interaction and combined impact on viewer engagement in the context of health short videos. Grounded in the Heuristic-Systematic Model, this study analyzed a dataset of 6,044 health short videos using regression and fsQCA. Results show both emotional and rational appeals significantly boost health short videos’ viewer engagement. FsQCA reveals specific combinations, such as positive textual sentiment with tone certainty, or easily understandable information combined with positive facial expressions and analytic expression, are crucial for high viewer engagement. This study extends the HSM to health short videos with multimodal appeals and offers practical guidance to emphasize the integration of emotional and rational appeals for optimizing viewer engagement.
Recommended Citation
Yu, Mengli; Cao, Yixuanzi; Zhang, Xuan; and Tan, Chee-Wee, "Disentangling the Effects of Emotional and Rational Appeals on Viewer Engagement in Health Short Videos" (2025). PACIS 2025 Proceedings. 18.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2025/ishealthcare/ishealthcare/18
Disentangling the Effects of Emotional and Rational Appeals on Viewer Engagement in Health Short Videos
Health short videos have become a vital tool for disseminating health information and exerting persuasive influence on viewers. Previous research has mainly examined the isolated effects of rational and emotional appeals, leaving a gap in the comprehensive analysis of their interaction and combined impact on viewer engagement in the context of health short videos. Grounded in the Heuristic-Systematic Model, this study analyzed a dataset of 6,044 health short videos using regression and fsQCA. Results show both emotional and rational appeals significantly boost health short videos’ viewer engagement. FsQCA reveals specific combinations, such as positive textual sentiment with tone certainty, or easily understandable information combined with positive facial expressions and analytic expression, are crucial for high viewer engagement. This study extends the HSM to health short videos with multimodal appeals and offers practical guidance to emphasize the integration of emotional and rational appeals for optimizing viewer engagement.
Comments
Healthcare